Government Healthcare by Experts

The Mayo Clinic weighs in
07/11/09 - Don Surber

Dr. Wood is the chairman of the Mayo Clinic, division of Health Care Policy & Research:

[edited] The clinic supports “value indexing” to determine how providers get paid. This would measure patient outcomes and cost over a period of time. The current bills in Congress contain very little that reflects payment for value.

Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar:

[edited]If we just simply change who is paying for something and do nothing to make the system more efficient, we are really not going to get where we want to go.

Don Surber:

[edited] This is exactly what is wrong with government-run health programs. Their goal is to save money, not lives. More than anything, I oppose having Sen. Klobuchar decide how “to make the system more efficient.”

Jim B comments:

[edited] When Sen. Klobuchar can show me a record of the government ever making anything more efficient, ever, then maybe we can talk about health care. But she needs to put up or shut up. Government bureaucrats claim to be able to do things they’ve never once demonstrated an ability to do. There’s absolutely no substance to back it up.

So come on, supporters of ObamaCare, show me where you can back up your claims. Even one of them.

Links

Healthcare Reform Myths

One of the myths: If you like your current plan you can keep it.

You can keep your current plan if it is still offered and the company is still around. This is not a silly consideration. Proponents have learned from the Hillary Care proposal in the 1990's that radical transformation does not sell. The current plan provides a framework to take away freedoms one at a time, to minimize resistance, and obscure the ultimate goal.

A century of monopoly by the Post Office shows us how much Congress likes competition to one of its high-cost, inefficient activities. Private insurance likely will disappear or be made to conform to government rules, standards, limitations, and costs.

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Massachusetts Health Care Cuts

Henry Stern at InsureBlog examines the Massachusetts Health program that is the darling of Washington. Here is a part:

Massachusetts can't pay for the plan by itself. It needs Washington to distribute funds from the national money tree to pay for this program.

$32 million of the $115 million in claimed savings comes from slowing payments to the managed-care health insurance companies that won bids to offer insurance through the Commonwealth Care program. Regulators said that by slowing enrollment growth, the companies would receive less money than they had banked on when they submitted their bids earlier this year.